12 comments:

Such a beautiful poem, to be found here this morning after that full moon all night last night (full at 1:40 this morning) together with these fell ponies -- no one has thought to put these together before, such an act for which all thanks --

3.8

light coming into sky above still blackridge, two crows calling back and forthin foreground, sound of wave in channel

I love this poem. One of my favorite poems. I've never seen it like this with "th'untrodden" though. Always "the untrodden." I understand the meter, but I thought it was irregular on purpose. Was this the original version?

I loved Wordsworth when I was a young man just beginning to appreciate the craft of bygone poets. His ability to be so concise and accessible had a lot to do with it, and this poem demonstrates that. Thanks for all the great ones you continue to remind me of in these posts Tom. And as for the photos with the poem, Steve said it best "no one has thought to put these together before, such an act for which all thanks"...

That's not the gravestone of Lucy, by the way. If she ever existed, no one knows who she was; some have speculated she was conflated out of imaginal projections of the poet's sister Dorothy.

The simple ballad stanza deployed to such wonderful effect in this poem was probably learnt by WW from Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry.

He was 28 in 1798, when he began drafting these pristine lyrics.

There were additional draft stanzas in this one.

Tom, this version of the text is as it appeared in the original edition of the Lyrical Ballads.

The comments from Michael, Manik, Tom and Vassilis, following on Steve's, show that like all the greatest poems, this one continues to live for us, and to move us -- whoever and wherever (New Jersey, India, Connecticut, Greece, Bolinas, if I've got the loci of our genii right) we are.

"like all the greatest poems, this one continues to live for us, and to move us -- whoever and wherever (New Jersey, India, Connecticut, Greece, Bolinas, if I've got the loci of our genii right) we are."

Our little poetry group at the library met up with Mr. Wordsworth just last week.

And what a lovely time we had. We usually discuss 3 poems over an hour and a half's time but when we passed an hour on the first - Tintern Abbey - we threw all caution to the winds and enjoyed the hell out of it.